EDITORIAL: The tension between animal research and animal rights
The extra-cute faces of extra-tiny squirrel monkeys have become a symbol for the conflict between research, a key to Long Island's future, and opposition to the use of animals in labs. We'll be talking about it - and continuing to experiment on animals - until nonanimal alternatives make it unnecessary.
The issue at Brookhaven National Laboratory is whether to irradiate the monkeys, to figure out the likely effects that space radiation will have on astronauts in future missions to Mars.
The lab's process in examining the proposal by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been exemplary, going beyond the statutory requirements for vetting animal experiments. The lab's director, Sam Aronson, is likely to decide in the next few weeks whether to greenlight the project. Whatever he does, this one experiment provides a useful window into the broader issue of animal experimentation and research.
The focus is on the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory at Brookhaven, which uses beams of heavy ions to simulate radiation that astronauts will experience in space. Up to now, scientists using the facility have not aimed the beams at any life form higher than rodents. But now a Massachusetts scientist wants to expose nonhuman primates to them at the lab for the first time.
Animal welfare advocates, who oppose the use of sentient creatures as lab subjects, have rallied around this issue. Their protests have escalated near McLean Hospital in Belmont, outside Boston, where the tiny squirrel monkeys would be examined after the radiation exposure. Billboards there proclaim: "Don't Nuke the Monkeys." At the lab, the discussion was less colorful, but just as earnest.
To its credit, the lab aired the issue fully before the Community Advisory Council, a citizens' group that has been meeting with lab officials for years to review such issues as environmental cleanup. Its members asked pointed questions of both the NASA representatives and the animal welfare activists, but the council did not reach a consensus. Some members asked whether the council, so concerned with cleanup, should focus on this research issue.
There was no question, however, that it was a proper subject for the lab's institutional animal care and use committee. Such committees, known by the unlovely acronym IACUC, are required by federal law to review research proposals, to make sure that animals are not unnecessarily subjected to pain and distress, that an experiment not use too many (or too few), and that animals of higher species aren't used when lower species could meet the research need.
By law, the committees include at least one veterinarian. They also include people not otherwise connected with the research institution - to provide a source of lay curiosity and questioning. The proposed protocol for the use of animals is supposed to be written so that nonscientists can understand it. Sometimes, the committees ask the researcher to revise the proposal if the language is too arcane.
In this case, the animal care committee at Brookhaven asked the researcher, Jack Bergman, for clarifications on several points. But ultimately, the members approved the study.
For animal welfare advocates, approval by such committees offers little comfort. They argue that the committees don't do enough to go beyond the conditions of the animals to the core question of the validity of the experiments. And, despite the web of protections - such as the Animal Welfare Act, the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, and Department of Agriculture inspections of facilities - they maintain that most scientific purposes can be accomplished without using animals at all.
In at least one case on Long Island, the obstacles to animal experimentation led a growing pharmaceutical company to leave. The company was Helicon, which started at the Broad Hollow Bioscience Park at Farmingdale State College. Helicon needed a larger space, with its own vivarium - a facility where test animals are kept. Company officials thought they had permission from the state to build one at Farmingdale, but that go-ahead turned into a full stop at the last minute, and the company moved to San Diego.
That probably won't be the last time the issue arises. Research - by large institutions such as Brookhaven, Stony Brook University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, as well as by private firms - is the future of the Island's economy. And, at least in the near term, researchers will still push to use animals.
The activists focus much of their energy on conditions in factory farms and slaughterhouses. But for this moment, they have turned their eyes on Brookhaven, where animal experiments are only a tiny fraction of the science. Their views deserve a respectful hearing, and animal-free experimentation is a worthy long-term goal. But for now, our scientists should push hard for the twin objectives of humane treatment of animals and smart science to help humans. hN
